1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ultrasonic image diagnostic system, and more particularly, to an ultrasonic image searching apparatus and an ultrasonic image transmission and reception system adopting the same, in which an ultrasonic image to be desired by a user is searched among ultrasonic images prestored in an ultrasonic image diagnostic system, and the searched results are displayed in order similar to the desired ultrasonic image.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to development of the electronic engineering field, a number of changes have occurred in an ultrasonic image technological field. Among them, a representative one is to process and store images in digital form. Thus, since ultrasonic images are processed digitally, the ultrasonic diagnostic system can process and store an enormous amount of ultrasonic images. A research for searching a desired image among the enormous amount of the stored ultrasonic images is briskly under progress. In particular, in the MPEG (Moving Pictures Expert Group) standard for a moving image compression method, an image searching method for searching a particular image among successive frames is being under studied. Also, in the medical imaging field, a method for searching an image using a frequency conversion method with respect to MRI images, is being researched.
However, most of the existing image searching methods of which the objects are general images in the world of nature, are applied chiefly to personal computers. The existing image searching methods have been applied only to the case where directionality of images is fixed at the time of searching medical images. Thus, there has been no ultrasonic image searching system which is applicable to the ultrasonic image diagnostic system where position of a probe is adjusted to obtain an ultrasonic image.
To solve the above problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide an ultrasonic image searching apparatus for effectively searching an ultrasonic image.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an ultrasonic image transmission and reception system for searching an ultrasonic image including an ultrasonic image searching apparatus which is connected to a network such as a web server.
To accomplish the above object of the present invention, there is provided an ultrasonic image searching apparatus comprising: an input unit for inputting a key word and an ultrasonic image for selecting an object to be searched; a feature extraction unit for extracting the feature of the ultrasonic image inputted via the input unit; a storage unit for storing a plurality of previously acquired ultrasonic images and a database of commentary information and image feature information with respect to each ultrasonic image; a display; and a controller for comparing the key word input from the input unit or the feature extracted from the feature extraction unit with the commentary information and the image feature information in the storage unit and outputting the ultrasonic images contained in the storage unit on the display according to a degree of similarity.
There is also provided an ultrasonic image transmission and reception system according to the present invention, comprising: a requester for requesting an ultrasonic image to be searched; and a provider connected to the requester on a network, for constructing a separate database storing ultrasonic images, searching an ultrasonic image which has been requested from the requester, and providing the searched result.